For discussion of anything pertaining to the Star Wars universe. This will most likely get spoiler-y very quickly, so I would at least recommend watching the original trilogy and possibly the prequel trilogy, if you don't mind some awful storytelling.

To avoid spoiling anything in the first post, I'd like to present a (relatively short, shallow and possibly incoherent, as I want to get discussion of other things started as quickly as possible) argument against auteur theory using Star Wars as the example, as I believe most (if not all) forms of art are a collaborative medium. The PT, regarded as being awful, was pretty much the creation of Lucas alone: his creative vision. They were widely regarded as being awful. The OT was very much a collaborative effort, as Lucas only directed Star Wars, and Gary Kurtz had a very large involvement, not to mention Lawrence Kasdan as a writer (and many others not being listed due to my laziness).

George Lucas, as the auteur, changed a lot in the various re-releases of the OT. Supposedly, it was because he didn't have the technology at the time, but if I recall, he made some plot changes that actually could have been made at the time of the original theatrical releases. Some of these changes were relatively minor (digitally added in ships and blaster bolts), but some made absolutely no sense at all. Giving examples could lead into spoiler territory, so I'll leave it there.

Any love for the EU (Expanded Universe) novels here? I'm personally not so keen on those detailing the adventures of the Skywalker and Solo families; what truly grabs me are the arcs revolving around the pilots. Rogue Squadron being my favorite.

Had to do a bit of searching for this thread (as I was sure we had made one, even though the majority of our Star Wars discussion back in the day took place in the Café thread). But in any case . . . As we know by now, the saga has continued. Without Lucas! What do those who've seen it think of Episode VII?

Without spoiling anything, I loved it. Not perfect, but easily better than the prequels, imo.

Oh my God a Star Wars thread! I watched the 6 movies when I was in primary school and have been a fan since then. But I admit that my Star Wars knowledge is only limited to that.

Zonkamatic wrote: George Lucas, as the auteur, changed a lot in the various re-releases of the OT. Supposedly, it was because he didn't have the technology at the time, but if I recall, he made some plot changes that actually could have been made at the time of the original theatrical releases. Some of these changes were relatively minor (digitally added in ships and blaster bolts), but some made absolutely no sense at all.

My friend said exactly the same thing other day. He watched the new movie and I asked him whether it was good. He told me to beware of some WTF moments. So I told him I actually like the prequels (I just listed them in that guilty pleasure thread today!) Then he, though utterly shocked, concluded that there should be no problems for me to watch Ep7 because of the reason above I'm going to watch it tomorrow to see if he's right

Last edited by 23623 on Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, I just watched Episode 7 this afternoon. It turned out that my friend was wrong about my reaction. I agree that the new sequel is better than the prequels but I do want to complain about … certain "WTF" moments

The plot is … somehow predictable imo, if you have watched OT and PT. I successfully guessed in advance what was going to happen at some points, including those "WTF" ones

I'm quite worried about how the director will deal with those characters from OT and PT. Please please be kind to them for the sake of the Force!

I was expecting some creative ways of introducing new characters (i.e. not the poor-boy-suddenly-goes-to-the-space routine) and Finn really surprised me. Among all the new characters, he's my favorite so far. I think he has potentials and am looking forward to seeing him more in Ep8 and Ep9.

_23623_ wrote:Well, I just watched Episode 7 this afternoon. It turned out that my friend was wrong about my reaction. I agree that the new sequel is better than the prequels but I do want to complain about … certain "WTF" moments

The plot is … somehow predictable imo, if you have watched OT and PT. I successfully guessed in advance what was going to happen at some points, including those "WTF" ones

I'm quite worried about how the director will deal with those characters from OT and PT. Please please be kind to them for the sake of the Force!

It definitely did bear a heavy resemblance to ANH at times, with certain very similar plot elements. I felt like it did enough with its own, new characters to make them look original enough to succeed in their own right. Thought most of the OT characters who reappeared were all used correctly, though. They managed to keep that sense of continuity without shoehorning them all in for the sake of it.

Oh sure, the plot is predictable, the characters are recycled, it's all about the battle sequences and the scenery, etc. That's what action films are for. When I want profound character analysis, I reread Les Mis. I thought that SW7 is quite decent as light entertainment - adventurous, visually captivating, not utterly cringe-worthy - what more would I want? Though I do understand that those who take SW deeply to heart might think otherwise. I was never a great fan myself, and I'm young enough to have watched the prequel before the original trilogy, so I don't have so much attachment to the first films to complain about the latter ones getting it all wrong. However, I think nothing can quite be authentic enough compared to the original impression. And I think that some of the character development is so cliche it's nauseating, but I just don't take it to heart.

Overall, my family's reaction to the film was to dub Leia "Margaret Thatcher 2.0", and to discover that Gollum has made himself quite a career with the Dark Side.

Yeah, it gets that balance correct between giving us characters who are deep enough to allow the viewer to care about them, while still ensuring that there's enough entertainment to keep audiences engaged. I'd say Kylo Ren was probably the most complex character there, with his struggle between light and dark, hatred of his father and love of his grandfather, along with his whole family history in general, so it'll be interesting to see where they go with him.

Enjolvert wrote:Yeah, it gets that balance correct between giving us characters who are deep enough to allow the viewer to care about them, while still ensuring that there's enough entertainment to keep audiences engaged. I'd say Kylo Ren was probably the most complex character there, with his struggle between light and dark, hatred of his father and love of his grandfather, along with his whole family history in general, so it'll be interesting to see where they go with him.

Yeah, definitely. He was an intriguing character. I also can't not like Han Solo. But my brother would argue that the best character is Chewie.

For me, the aggravating characters were Rey and Finn. But Rey at least has a second side to her. Finn is built on cliches from the beginning till the end; I don't think he has an aspect to him that isn't an overdramatized cliche.

Enjolvert wrote:Yeah, it gets that balance correct between giving us characters who are deep enough to allow the viewer to care about them, while still ensuring that there's enough entertainment to keep audiences engaged. I'd say Kylo Ren was probably the most complex character there, with his struggle between light and dark, hatred of his father and love of his grandfather, along with his whole family history in general, so it'll be interesting to see where they go with him.

Yeah, definitely. He was an intriguing character. I also can't not like Han Solo. But my brother would argue that the best character is Chewie.

For me, the aggravating characters were Rey and Finn. But Rey at least has a second side to her. Finn is built on cliches from the beginning till the end; I don't think he has an aspect to him that isn't an overdramatized cliche.

I actually quite liked Finn. The idea of a stormtrooper turning against his own hasn't been done yet, and he's got a decent blend of heroism and self-interest to bring the audience onside with him. Good comic moments too.

Rey was probably a lot closer to cliche; she's the young hero with a mysterious past who turns out to have special powers. She still carried her role well enough to make it interesting though.

I don't know what constitutes as spoilers anymore. There's nothing overly spoilery in the following paragraphs, but if you haven't seen TFA, maybe skip this post?

Chantefleurie wrote:For me, the aggravating characters were Rey and Finn. But Rey at least has a second side to her. Finn is built on cliches from the beginning till the end; I don't think he has an aspect to him that isn't an overdramatized cliche.

I have to say I agree with you here. I have dozens of points of contention with this new movie, but Rey is one of the biggest. I had mentioned to one of my roommates in the kitchen this evening that I hate how often I hear people say "hooray! we finally have a great female heroine in Rey!" as though Leia never existed, because she was awesome, independent, crafty, well-developed and has the greatest shot-to-hit ratio of anyone in the Star Wars universe. My roommate nodded and said she agreed, but pointed out that the thing about Rey is that they she's not a heroine, she's a male hero in a woman's body. It's like someone took that thing that people are always saying where "if your character doesn't have to be male for any plot-specific reasons, why not just make them female?" and did it. Wow, she talks to droids and she knows about ships and she flies the Millennium Falcon and she can speak Shyriiwook and pull off Jedi mind-tricks and fight with a light saber and she's brave and fierce and lovable!

... but for me it was just way too much way too soon. She does things it took Luke two movies to learn, so it bothers me that it makes Luke look less great as a Jedi because she learned how to do stuff sooo much more quickly than he did and also it takes away the interesting part which is the journey. I want to see Rey try and fail and pick herself up and succeed and learn from mistakes and then fly the Falcon and fight with a light saber.

Taking away the journey part is also why I don't find the relationship between Han, Leia and Kylo Ren as emotional as I should have. Seeing Han confront Kyle meant nothing to me, because I never saw anything of what transpired in the thirty years leading up to this moment. The movie tells me to care but doesn't give me a compelling reason to beyond "hey! this is a thing that happened at some point! here's the climax of that thing!" No rising action = no emotional attachment.

No rising action in Rey's arc of going from sad little scavenger on a backwater desert planet to awesome Jedi also means no emotional attachment. It just sort of happened. So, sure, it's great that there's a heroine out there who fits more into the male heroic mold than the one usually reserved for the ladies, but from the standpoint of someone in the audience watching and digesting this: I didn't feel anything, the way seeing Luke struggle to raise his X-Wing from the swamp made me feel.

I second the spoiler semi-alert thing. If you're avoiding spoilers, don't read this post.

Enjolvert wrote:I actually quite liked Finn. The idea of a stormtrooper turning against his own hasn't been done yet, and he's got a decent blend of heroism and self-interest to bring the audience onside with him. Good comic moments too.

Rey was probably a lot closer to cliche; she's the young hero with a mysterious past who turns out to have special powers. She still carried her role well enough to make it interesting though.

I'm not arguing with the way you perceive Finn, I realize we're looking for different qualities in our characters, but for me his character was empty. Why? Because you knew from the moment they showed a bloody handprint on the helmet how he was going to turn out. He's going to rise above his brainwashing, learn to despise war, but then be inspired again by higher ideals. You know he and Rey and going to have "a thing" for each other since the moment he lands on her planet. You know that despite him insisting to himself in the beginning that he just wants to flee, he's going to help the "good guys" and be quite the hero.

At the end of it, I'm not sure I liked the whole "stormtroopers are also humans" concept. For one thing, even though it's novel to Star Wars specifically, the "soldiers/foreigners/enemies are humans too" theme has been beaten by fiction, if not to death, then at least into a coma. Also, that, and the revelation of how stormtroopers are created, kind of puts a wet blanket over the previous films. There, the attitude was that stormtroopers are largely dumb cannon-fodder, and it's right and adventurous and even fun to shoot them. Heck, shooting them isn't even difficult, it's like a practice exercise. Ep7 takes a different take, and that would be fine if it was a stand-alone, but this new bone they toss the audience is very weird when it comes from a history of 6 episodes of laughing at stormtroopers. I'm also not sure if I'm more inclined to laugh or groan at the fact that all it takes for Finn is to switch alliances to suddenly be able to hit things when he shoots. The whole idea doesn't sit well within the existing framework of SW, and as for its independent value, I can't say it added much to the existing theme.

Finn as a character wasn't super great either. Usually, even if a character is cliche and obvious and flat, there's still some aspect that you can sort of respect. But Finn seemed to be lacking in everything, from courage to cowardice. I know it's my own taste, but he just seemed like a filler character thrust into a main role, but without enough personality to fill that role.

In any case, I still enjoyed the movie at face value. SW and Finn are far from the worst out there, so I really shouldn't complain that they're not among the best, considering that it *is* an action movie.

As for Rey, her overall plot was equally predictable, and the over-feministic character mold is not much better. But her character had more of an edge, which was my touching point with her that I lacked with Finn, and I was actually excited for the outcome of some of her actions. Even though you know that she's going to be the new Luke, I still couldn't predict her immediate responses to situations. I was excited for the outcome. You know that she's going to lead the new generation of "good guys", but you don't know what she's actually going to do.

deHavilland wrote:Taking away the journey part is also why I don't find the relationship between Han, Leia and Kylo Ren as emotional as I should have. Seeing Han confront Kyle meant nothing to me, because I never saw anything of what transpired in the thirty years leading up to this moment. The movie tells me to care but doesn't give me a compelling reason to beyond "hey! this is a thing that happened at some point! here's the climax of that thing!" No rising action = no emotional attachment.

Agreed about Han and Leia. Didn't go through the journey with that relationship, and wasn't drawn in by it in its culmination. But Han and Kylo was well done, I think. I wouldn't want another movie like Ep3: one teenage moaning horror turning evil was quite enough for me. I'm perfectly happy to pick it up from that point. And the Han/Kylo confrontation was wonderfully done, with just enough different hues, motives, and behaviours (and outcomes! ) to make it different from Anakin/Obi-Wan and Luke/Vader.

I must say I didn't like Leia much in that film. I didn't like her much in previous films too, but I respected her as a character. She's lost something between then and now. But Han is just the same, and that was perfect. You can't not like Han. He's the kind of person you'd like to know in real life. He has his faults, but he also has the biggest soul in the galaxy. Call that a young girl falling for a character mold if you will, but note that I didn't fall for Finn.

Just watched Rogue 1. Love it! I guessed correctly what would happen halfway through the movie. Did the same thing when I watched TFA.

A friend (not a SW fan) watched the movie last month and thought it was Ep8. I said "Seriously dude, after watching the whole thing you still think it's the sequel of TFA??" And he replied "It isn't? I thought the Death Star looks like the same?" I hadn't watched the movie then, so I just told him "as far as I know, this is definitely not Ep8 but it does have something to do with the original trilogy" Then he said "Oh...then it must be the sequel of Ep6?" ...